Word smithing

Besides this blog and its contents, there have been occasions where I wrote
someting longer and oriented towards a different goal. This page lists out those
writings for your reading pleasure. And also because I need a place where I can
always find these.

In this article, I shall deal with the concept of formula, created by John
Cawelti as a means of studying popular culture, mostly literature. Based on
a difference between conventions and inventions, this concept promised a
lot of change in theoretical dealings with popular culture. However, some
changes are needed in its definition, since Cawelti didn't spend a lot of
time defining formula's mutation through time as well as its relation to
genre, another concept used in popular culture studies. I also investigate
in greater depth the aforementioned relation between convention and invention.

In this article we have shown the changes that happen with genre and it's
forms when it is externalized in reality. In order to better explain and
illustrate that process, we have used the theories about genre as a point
of fixation of reality that were crafted by Mikhail Bakhtin, a russian
formalist. Through a very special process of classificaiton on a hybrid
body of narratives, we have seen how rigid and one-sided process of
classification, which treats genre as a category fixed in time and space,
ultimately damages our analysis of folklore materials.

Science fiction was, both as a literary genre and through its presence in
film and television, the object of many disciplines until pre- sent time.
The idea of inevitable technological progress and scientific de- velopment
as basis of the future of human worlds is present as one of key science
fiction motifs. This paper’s aim is to use the specificities of anthropology
as a discipline so it could observe reflections of the con- struction and
constitution of technological systems, and, even more im- portantly, their
promises in science fiction literature and genre in general.